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The Gaza Strip- a Palestinian land, governed by Hamas fighters and now facing a historic humanitarian crisis of death, starvation, and an impending epidemic-all induced by Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel, in the name of a war to ‘eliminate’ Hamas. The fight unleashed upon Gaza is not new. The land that witnessed “Nakba”, not only faces the threat of completely irreversible destruction, it also faces the mistrust of the world.
Gaza’s Health Ministry has informed that the death toll from Israel’s attack on the densely populated Gaza Strip has risen to 20,000. And yet use of the term Pallywood surged to 2,20,000 since 7 October Hamas attack on Israel, on microblogging site ‘X’, formerly known as Twitter.
But what is Pallywood?
The Israel-Palestine war has also unveiled grwoing disbelief among people about the death toll, genocide, and infused suffering of the civilians.
One of the key terms used to deny or minimise human suffering in Gaza is “Pallywood”, a disparaging combination of “Palestine” and “Hollywood”.
People who use Pallywood claim fake or staged footage of Palestinian “crisis actors” posing as genuine civilian casualties is regularly shared online to influence public opinion and deceive global media.
A BBC analysis revealed that usage of the term Pallywood flared-up during Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 2014, 2018, and 2021. The term had either 9,500 or 13,000 mentions in a single month on X.
However, after the 7 October Hamas attack, the number of mentions of Pallywood peaked at 220,000 in November, the BBC analysis reveals.
The BBC report also found that the ones who used the term Pallywood the most on Instagram, Facebook, X, or any other social media , were Israeli officials, celebrities, and popular bloggers from Israel and the US.
Notably, the claims of crisis actor is so ingrained that an influential daily in Israel called Jerusalem Post had posted an image of five-month-old Palestinian baby in rigor mortis after his death and said it proved he was a doll. After a backlash, the paper removed the article from its website, saying on X (formerly Twitter) that the report “was based on faulty sourcing”.
The BBC report says, the idea of crisis actor, or people who are paid to act out some particular tragedy or disaster is not new when it comes to war like situation.
However, the volume of dehumanising rhetoric posted during this war has surprised even those who deal with such content on a daily basis even when it has been reported that the 10-week old aggravated war has killed at least 20,000 Palestinians in Gaza, and over 1,000 Israelis.
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Published: 22 Dec 2023, 09:05 PM IST
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